Summary

In this section, the speaker turns from considering achievements to considering romance as a comparison to the garden. He describes the way that young lovers carve their names in tree trunks, and insists that the trees themselves are far more beautiful than any woman. He compares the colors found in a beloved person's appearance unfavorably to the superior colors of nature.

He then turns to classical allusions that compare beautiful women to trees. He retells the story of Apollo and Daphne, in which the young nymph is turned into a laurel tree to save her from the god Apollo's pursuit. In his version, though, he only pursued her so that she could turn into a tree, more beautiful than she was as a nymph. He does the same with the story of Pan and Syrinx.

Next, he describes, in extremely sensuous terms, the physical...